So pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve, Then pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve, (Lyrics - Backus Music - Daniel Decatur Emmett originally "Jordan is a Hard Road To Travel") Lyrics detailing the Dead Rabbits' battle with the Bowery Boys on July 4, 1857, were written by Henry Sherman Backus ("The Saugerties Bard") in Hoboken, New Jersey. On July 4 a bloody fight, the Dead Rabbits Riot, occurred with the Metropolitan Police and the Bowery gangs against the Municipal Police, Mulberry Street Boys, Roach Guard, and Dead Rabbits in Bayard Street.
Wood refused to disband his Municipal Department, and so for the first half of 1857, the two rival departments battled it out on the streets of the city until the courts ordered the Municipals to disband that July. One of these proposals was to disband the Municipal Police Department, in which Wood's supporters had a controlling interest, and replace it with a state-run Metropolitan Police Department. Thus, the Bowery Boys threw their support in league with state Republicans, who proposed legislation that would strip Wood of certain powers and place them in the hands of Albany. The Bowery gangs were among the latter, while the Dead Rabbits were supporters of Wood. New York's Democrats were divided into two camps: those who supported Mayor Fernando Wood and those who opposed him. Congressman who ameliorated the conditions of the Irish-American communities for years to come. One of the Dead Rabbit leaders, John Morrissey, would later become a Democratic State Senator and U.S. They were also in the forefront of the Dead Rabbits Riot and the New York Draft Riots.īesides street-fighting, the Dead Rabbits supported politicians such as Fernando Wood and the Tammany Hall machine, whose platforms included the welfare and benefit of immigrant groups and minorities, and under the leadership of Isaiah Rynders the gang acted as enforcers to violently persuade voters during elections to vote for their candidates.Īccording to legend, one of the most feared Dead Rabbits was " Hell-Cat Maggie," a woman who reportedly filed her teeth to points and wore brass fingernails into battle. These two rival gangs fought more than 200 gang battles in a span of 10 years, beginning in 1834, and they often outmanned the police force and even the state militias. Their chief rival gang was the Bowery Boys, native-born New Yorkers who supported the Know Nothing political party in favor of kicking out the immigrant groups. They often clashed with Nativist political groups seeking to eliminate Irish immigrant communities from New York City, and were instrumental in protecting their ethnic communities and identities from these radical groups. The Dead Rabbits were so named because they supposedly carried a dead rabbit on a pike or were said to throw a dead rabbit in the middle of a fight before it commenced.
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